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Thursday, 29 September 2011

Don't stop til you get enough.

THERE is a part of me which wonders why Conrad Murray is bothering to deny he killed Michael Jackson.

There's some quibbling to be done over how much fault can be attributed when the man who died was a drug addict with a heart and body under enormous strain, but it has to be unarguable that Murray was at the very least criminally negligent not only in continuing to supply that addiction but in administering drugs so powerful that it's illegal to use them outside a hospital. His 'defence' that he was giving Jackson a general anaesthetic commonly used in childbirth to help him with insomnia is simply mind-bending.

But as the court case unfolds it is putting on display not just the ever-fascinating Jackson clan but a procession of people each of whom, so far and as much as I can see, bears some blame for Jackson's death. The concert promoter who signed off £100,000 a month for Jackson's doctor, despite thinking it was astronomical. The lawyer who wondered why the singer needed a cardiac machine backstage. The assistant who dealt with him every day.

They're all raising concerns and pointing the finger now, and not one of them seems to have bothered doing it when the man was alive. But then all the witnesses in the case stood to make a lot of money out of the King of Pop, addict or not, so long as the good doctor kept him going.

Alongside the criminal case AEG, the promoter for the comeback gigs which Jackson was rehearsing for when he died, is being sued by Jackson's mother and children for not providing 'physical care' to him. AEG itself has lost many millions by failing to put on the gigs, and failing to put on tributes which were supposed to replace them. I'm sure there's an insurance firm somewhere refusing to decide on a pay out until after Conrad Murray's court case is settled one way or the other.

And if Murray is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter you can bet the result will be, not just a maximum of just four years in prison, but a massive bill from AEG, the insurers', and the Jackson family too.

Whatever you think of Jacko, for all that he did or was accused of doing, he was a baby in a man's body who'd been treated like a piggy bank almost from the day he was born and by the people he trusted most. His mum and dad ignored the rules of their own faith to put him on the stage and from that moment on he stopped being a mere human. He became houses, jewellery, cars and plastic surgery; their fame and fortune and their fuck-up, too.

The only people on the whole planet who saw Michael Jackson as a person were his children. I can't imagine what it's like to see your father die at such a young age, but I sincerely hope that the circus of lawsuits which will unravel over the next few years sucks up every last penny of the Jackson fortune and leaves those kids with nothing but an untarnished, priceless memory of their dad.